Strategic Planning of the industry-political Business Development of Rheinmetall in the European Union

The introduction of the dual comitology system with the European defence funding programmes has led to the emergence of a new form of European interest representation. This intra-European interest representation is no longer concerned with the conventional representation of interests in European policy processes, but with the formation of alliances with Member States for defence industrial cooperation. This emergence precedes a 40-year-long push-pull process between the European Commission and the European Council in the context of a conflict between liberalisation and protection of the internal defence market. In order to prevent Member States from extensive application of Article 346 (TFEU) and thus to prevent further fragmentation of the European defence industrial base, the European Commission has innovated the political room for manoeuvre it was given by the Treaties to create a Europeanised version of Article 346 in the Public Procurement Directive 2009/81/EC. Article 13(c) states that, if two or more Member States have jointly researched and developed a defence product, the procurement of that product by the participating Member States is excluded from the competition rules of the internal market. After a long trust-building process between the European Commission and the European Council,..